Serge

$18.00

By Yasmina Reza

Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Acclaimed novelist and playwright Yasmina Reza masterfully portrays the messiness of family, where affection and resentment intertwine and the weight of a shared past looms large.

Paperback • ISBN: 9781632064011
Publication date: Aug 26, 2025

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ABOUT THE BOOK

When adult siblings Serge, Jean, and Nana embark on an unexpected road trip, they take along one daughter and more than enough tangled family history. As Jean watches his older brother fall apart, he tries to hold the center, and what might have been a solemn pilgrimage into the past quickly devolves into a tragicomedy of mutual fixations, private grievances, and the limits of kept company. As reflective as it is incisive, Serge is a testament to Reza’s gift for finding light in the abyss.

PRAISE FOR Serge:

“A lot of fun, and very smart about family, aging, and being Jewish.”

— Kirkus Reviews

“Yasmina Reza turns a mordant eye on the misuses of war memorialization in Serge . . . she is a dab hand at crabby back-and-forths.”

— Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“The book’s strengths are its well-written characters and its deft portrayal of difficult family members trying to learn to live with one another. . . . Readers may wish for a moment when Serge finally receives his karma, but the irony is he is his own punishment.”

— Jewish Daily Forward

“Reza brings her skill at high-energy dialogue to the story of three adult siblings. . . . Serge is a lot of fun, and very smart about family, aging, and being Jewish.”
— Marion Winik, The Weekly Reader

“If you saw Yasmina Reza’s play Art on Broadway, then you will have some sense of her voice: a mix of humor, irony, and seriousness. Reza’s voice is at the heart of this novel, which could also be titled, ‘Family Squabbles at Auschwitz.’ It’s as if Jerry Seinfeld went to Auschwitz with his friends.”

— Jewish Book Council

“Intentionally small-scale—even when dealing with something like the Holocaust—Serge is still a resonant work, a solid novel dealing with its themes in interesting ways.”

— M. A. Orthofer, The Complete Review

“Reza’s fourth novel is undoubtedly her most personal text, the one in which, without departing from her sense of detail and the killer line that forms her signature, she delivers herself with the most sincerity.”

— Vogue

“Finally, a book that dares! The lightness of the irreverent Yasmina Reza is the continuation of wisdom by other means.”

— The Point

“What is this talent? Yasmina Reza has a gift for bringing characters to life and spicing up situations.”

— Marie Claire

“Yasmina Reza’s writing is like mercury. Her story unfolds with unparalleled fluidity without us perceiving the seams.”

— Elle

“Reza injects poetry into satire. Her art is knowing how to pierce the soul.”

— Le Journal du Dimanche

“A perilous tightrope act that brings beauty to our chaotic existences.”

— Le Parisien Week-End

“Reza’s tragicomic pen works wonders, transforming the worst horrors into anthology scenes and our daily worries into comedies.”

— L'Express

“A pure delight.”

— Sud Ouest

“Reza leaves us breathless with this finely crafted little gem.”

— Version Feminina

“In this novel with its chiseled dialogue, we love each other as much as we tear each other apart.”

— Le Vif L'Express

“Reza multiplies the comic dialogues, the incisive sallies, and these eternal scenes, which we have all experienced, which grip, beyond the imaginable.”

— Le Pèlerin

“In this novel about siblings, old age, Jewishness, and solitude too, Yasmina Reza displays all her artistry.”

— La Provence

“A highly anticipated novel, this text, which explores the bonds of a family as diverse as it is close-knit and deeply human.”

— S the Magazine

“With this very edgy comedy, Yasmina Reza proves that she masters the art of the novel as well as the tricks of the theater.”

— Lire

“A breath of fresh air.”

— Le Soir

“A novelist and playwright delights in the ups and downs of an odiously endearing clan.”

— Paris Match

“That’s what we love about Yasmina Reza: her freedom. And her way of using dark humor and daring to do anything.”

— La Voix du Nord

“The new Yasmina Reza, of extraordinary power and truth.”

— Alsace

“A summary of life with the scalpel of words.”

— Page des Libraires

“If the author has always led her readers, with her free and subversive pen, to question the human condition, here she goes even further . . .”

— Télé-Loisirs

“Reza tackles painful subjects with lightness.”

— France Info

“A sumptuous novel about a family of crazy Jews. Both funny and moving.”

— Challenges

“It’s great art.”

— Europe 1

“Hilarious. And inappropriate. But hilarious precisely because it is inappropriate . . . Reza crosses every boundary between comedy and tragedy.”

— Teresa Luxone, Limina

“While her characters provoke, fight and resent each other, Yasmina Reza delicately leaves traces of the mutual love and shared memories that continue to bind them all together. And it is precisely this tension that constitutes this novel’s strength.”

— Alice de Reviers, Albertine

“Here is a book that better resembles a play than a novel: a dramatic subject rooted in history; a disturbing and offbeat treatise; endearing, ridiculous or whimsical characters; lively dialogues. But Serge is also an answer to the famous and very current question: can we laugh at everything?”

— Rodolphe de Saint Hilaire, Culture-Tops

“Can we say that this is one of the funniest texts written in French about a visit to Auschwitz, or is it incongruous? Funny because it is true: it is neither a farce nor a fable . . . What does it mean to be a family? What does it mean to be Jewish? The novel raises a few existential questions in passing, with great accuracy and dazzling virtuosity.”

— Natalie Levisalles, En Attendant Nadeau

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Playwright and novelist Yasmina Reza's work has been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Her play Art was the first non-English language play to win a Tony Award; Conversations After a Burial, The Unexpected Man, and Life X 3 have all been award-winning critical and commercial successes internationally; and God of Carnage, which also won a Tony Award, was adapted for film by Roman Polanski. A new play, Bella Figura, premiered in Germany in May 2015. Her fiction includes Hammerklavier, Desolation, and Adam Haberberg. Reza lives in Paris.

About the Translator

Jeffrey Zuckerman is a translator of French, including books by the artists Jean-Michel Basquiat and the Dardenne brothers; queer writers Jean Genet and Hervé Guibert; and the Mauritian novelists Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, and Carl de Souza. A graduate of Yale University, he has been a finalist for the TA First Translation Prize and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize, and recipient of a PEN/Heim translation grant and the French Voices Grand Prize. In 2020 he was named a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.